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Friday, June 01, 2007

loch ness madness!

okay...

i am in high writing mode this week, working on several projects and so focused that wednesday passed me right by without a post here on the blog. today was looking iffy too--sorry, just have some looming deadlines that are keeping me too focused to blog...

anyway, the trick is that my (our) good friend, scott weinstein (check out his stuff at www.afterschoolagent.com !)sent over this breaking story--well, i guess it broke over the weekend--of new video of the legendary loch ness monster! woo hoo! nessie's back!i've copied the story below, which may or may not be legal, but enjoy...!and check out the video clip at

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) -- Like tartan, bagpipes, and shortbread Scotland's Loch Ness Monster is as much an emblem as a tourist draw.

And now Nessie's back.

An amateur scientist has captured what Loch Ness Monster watchers say is among the finest footage ever taken of the elusive mythical creature reputed to swim beneath the waters of Scotland's most mysterious lake. (Watch the 'monster' footage )

"I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this jet black thing, about 45-feet (15 meters) long, moving fairly fast in the water," said Gordon Holmes, the 55-year-old a lab technician from Shipley, Yorkshire, who took the video this past Saturday.

He said it moved at about 6 mph (10 kph) and kept a fairly straight course.

"My initial thought is it could be a very big eel, they have serpent-like features and they may explain all the sightings in Loch Ness over the years."

Loch Ness is surrounded by myth and mystery, as it is the largest and deepest inland expanse of water in Britain. About 750 feet (230 meters) to the bottom, it's even deeper than the North Sea.

Nessie watcher and marine biologist Adrian Shine of the Loch Ness 2000 center in Drumnadrochit, on the shores of the lake, viewed the video and hopes to properly analyze it in the coming months.

"I see myself as a skeptical interpreter of what happens in the loch, but I do keep an open mind about these things and there is no doubt this is some of the best footage I have seen," Shine said.

He said the video is particularly useful because Holmes panned back to get the background shore into the shot. That means it was less likely to be a fake and provided geographical bearings allowing one to calculate how big the creature was and how fast it was traveling.

While many sightings can be attributed to a drop of the local whisky, legends of Scottish monsters date back to one of the founders of the Christian church in Scotland, St. Columba, who wrote of them in about 565 A.D.

More recently, there have been more than 4,000 purported Nessie sightings since she was first caught on camera by a surgeon on vacation in the 1930s.

Since then, the faithful have speculated whether it is a completely unknown species, a sturgeon -- even though they have not been native to Scotland's waters for many years -- or even a last surviving dinosaur.

Shine doubts that last explanation.

"There are a number of possible explanations to the sightings in the loch. It could be some biological creature, it could just be the waves of the loch or it could be some psychological phenomenon in as much as we see what we want to see," he said.

But Nessie isn't just an icon of the paranormal -- she's also an emblem of Scottish tourism. She has been the muse for cuddly toys and immortalized on T-shirts and posters showing her classic three-humped image.

The Scottish media is skeptical of Nessie stories but Holmes' footage is of such good quality that even the normally reticent BBC Scotland aired the video on its main news program on Tuesday.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

9 comments:

actually, looking at it, i can see the nice points that the researcher made about details like the includied shoreline making size comparisons easier and such, but i'm really dying for the day we get to see something with a little more definition.i was talking with kc carleson yesterday about it and he mentioned a recent report claiming that loch ness would just be too small to sustain a creature of that purported size. but being such a deep loch (lake--the deepest in great briatain) and it's below water topography still being a mystery, there is every chance that this lake is connected to one or more of the other nearby lochs which are in some cases larger and much more secluded. so...

Funny you should say that Bill. when I was a kid, 8 or 9, my friend Timmy Doust and I, having just watched Monster Squad, decided wen we grew up we'd find all the urban legens like Nessiee, Bigfoot etc. SO Tim's dad posed us with the question of what would happen to them after we showed them off to the world. And pointed out the end of King Kong. If anyone does find them I hope they keep it to themselves.

ha! great story, colin!when i was in eighth grade, my friends and i made a pact that we would leave on the day of our high school graduation for british columbia where we would build a trap (basically a big, steel-walled pit greased with vaseline that he couldn't climb out of...) and make our fortunes as bigfoot hunters. needless to say that dream fell apart and we all went out and got drunk after graduation with everybody else instead.also, monster squad--great movie!!